My Sister's Birthday

We watch as toddlers
run squealing through the house,
laughter bounding through bright halls,
a knee-level storm of pure joy.

They punctuate our grown-up conversation
as the slide-show begins.

Now you’re the bright eyed infant!

Mom was so young and pretty
Holding you close
in her strong, gleaming arms,

as the cousins, delighted, cry
“Look! Grandma’s a baby!”

In wonder we watch
the years of youth and school
love and weddings
and bright new babies,

pause on the haunting eyes
of those gentle people
whom we’ve loved
then lost
to the good night.

As your party continues,
I see in the eyes
of four generations,
a century’s worth
of smiling for the camera
a cloud of love
transcending both years and death.

So don’t worry about your age, dear sister.
clearly
we never really grow old.

(5/11/2014)

My Mother's Gift

Photo: Brian Federle

“It is our emptiness in the presence of the abyss of His reality, our silence in the presence of His infinitely rich silence, our joy in the bosom of the serene darkness in which His light holds us absorbed, it is all this that praises Him.”   Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation. (for Brian)

You visited me near dawn. 

I saw you
and felt your joy
and heard your voice,
like a memory of waking to bird-song
on a warm, Ohio summer's morning -

you used to sing "rise and shine!"
bringing me bleary-eyed, bounding
into my childhood's
glowing day.

And last night
I saw you again.

I love my dreams about you.
You sweep away
all fear
with your calm voice.

But always after,
when I wake up,
you are gone,
and I face another indifferent day
in this agnostic world.

But this time was different!
"You are glowing!" I said
from the deep mist of my sleep,

"It is because 
He Is."

And though I could not see
what you ceaselessly see,
I gazed upon the 
overwhelming light
enfolding you,
and I tried
to find its source
but could only feel
its sudden glory...
its unremitting,
warm embrace
of unconditional
love.

I did not want to wake...
I wanted to stay with you,
in the warmth
of this revelation,

but of course,
I returned to the morning
to the pale sun,
to the granite and steel world,
to the darkness of the mirror,
to life,

and yet,
your  gift remains
in the glow of faith
beyond 
my failing sight.




(10 Jan 2011; 6 Dec. 2016: 26 April 2017)

The Sea of Love

“….it is a sea of Love which flows through the One Body....”

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation.

The sea of Love

fills my lungs

courses through

open fingers

warms glowing

heart, pulses

blood-lines

through diaphanous

skin.

In in the surge

of mother-sea

I wait

and grow

and emerge

into who

will be.

(22 April 2013)